Guide: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Dooooooooooooooom!

[Radio_Star]

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

[licker]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

Go with SCs who laugh at puny attempts to stop your arrows. At some point the only real reason you have those bodies is to speed up sieging.

Otherwise you can look to the kind of battlefield magic vfb mentioned, use communions if you need to. Forge crystal shields for some extra boost to your black priests.

[vfb]

Shadow Blast, Magma Eruption, Rain of Stones. Anything that's AoE damage. Wear some earth boots and bring some blood stones; fly in some vampires with death gems if you need them too. Hire some ranger commanders and send your ranged units raiding.

Oh, and Ulm has some very nice infantry units, the Pikemen are quite good I hear. Not to mention those Ghoul Guardians!

[Dedas]

Good tips vfb!

[Tolkien]

I've revamped the guide, added a unit-by-unit analysis, and changed the pretender design.

Decided that the +2 RP was more important then the +1 MR, and decided the Great Enchantress was a better rainbow chassis then the Frost Father (though the Chill Aura was fun in SP).

[Dedas]

Good work Tolkien!

Some small things though:

*Morningstars do not ignore shields (the same with flails), they do however get a +2 bonus to attack against them.

*I don't see why pikemen should have a worse time than anything else against lots of infantry. Getting hit in combat basically gets down to your defence. While pikemen has 8 defence compared to 12 of Morningstar infantry this only means that they have a disadvantage of two infantry (-2+ -2) attacks, but that is it. After that the morningstar infantry has lost their advantage while the pikeneer still got his - repel. Yes, morningstars are much better against shorter (1 and down) weapons because they will have repel as well, but it ends there. Pikeneers will never lose that advantage except to other pikes (length 6). Yes, repel gets harder and harder (-2 per repel) but takes a while for it to get impossible AND pikeneers still got their defence although 4 less than morningstar infantry.

To conclude:
I would choose Morningstar Infantry over Pikeneers if faced with the following: Missile units, very short length weapons (less than 2, daggers, claws etc), very high morale infantry 14+ (because the drn + 13 repel check), shield bearing infantry with short weapons (not spears) due to +2 attack from morningstar.

I would choose Pikeneers over Morningstar Infantry if I face the following: Over length 3 weapons (Zweihander greatswords have 3) like spears, medium (13-10) to low morale troops (9-).

I would choose Zweihanders over all the other if I face the following: High HP units with length 3 or less weapons, due to their very high protection plus repel they would normally survive the encounter.

[chrispedersen]

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

That's my point. You can tilt the heat/cold scale depending on who you're up against.

[chrispedersen]

Ok.. 22 games played to the end of year 3.

Three competeing philosophies:

1. Mine: Heavy blood/nature awake pretender. Luck scales.
2. Licker: Moderate awake pretender. Luck scales.
3. Dedas/Tolkien: Sleeping pretender. Order scales.

So here is what I found - all things considered, I thought my strategy was the hardest, with the slowest ramp up. Plus sides on mine:

A. Fully kitted out SC: Blood thorn, armor of souls, horror helmet, Eyeshield, Luck amulet, Boots of quickness, Amulet of MR.
Prophet.

HP: 55+. MR 30 ish; mid 20's. Regen like 13. With the blood thorn shredded even beat 4-6 bless niefles.

Occassional game breaking luck events: Each of the games got Incredible luck events. I have seen the 3000 gp event almost once per game. Magic item events - ring of wizardry!
Animists, and sometimes frost fathers.

B. National heros. More than 400 blood in the bank. Highest research.

2: Better gem income. Better scales meant better early expansion, 1 more castle than option 1. Still, slow slogging first year.

3. Much easier first year expansion. Magic averaged 280 pts less research than option 1. Gems in the bank was comparable to #1, due to luck events for #1 - however per turn income was higher due site searching with asleep pretender (when it awakened)

More than *twice* as many castles on the average - with 13 at the end of year 3. However, I still had yet to cast my first sanguine heritage; no vampires no counts, and no real blood economy. No national heros.

The question is - how would it fare against human opponents.

In my games - I always try to transition to SC's. Yet I have to say, that I think the transition happens to early in my strategy.

So overall, I am convinced that despite the design challenges of coming up with the extra 40 points, an asleep rainbow pretender with order scales is probably the best strategy.

I'd like to offer a small refinement to Tolkien: Obviously you wish a pretender with death access for your sanguine heritage spell. However, also valuable early on for your ability to lead
your ghoul guardians.

So, in short. I was wrong. I still think my strategy cool, neat and nifty. Just not optimal.

[chrispedersen]

For the sleeping pretenders, I used a crone with accross the bord 4's except earth and air. Dominion 5.

Fire is important for flame arrows.